Oddsmakers at the top political betting sites have unveiled their odds for the 2024 Democratic Vice President nominee, presenting an enticing opportunity to place a bet with favorable plus odds. Among the options, we highly recommend considering an investment in Michelle Obama for your best bet.
The Odds
Currently, Kamala Harris is heavily favored — at -275, according to BetOnline (Find out more with our BetOnline Review)– to be her party’s vice-presidential nominee. While -275 is a lot more palatable than what it was previously, that is still a lot of chalk.
From a value perspective, it just doesn’t make sense to invest in Harris because the win would be too negligible and the risk would be too great. Fortunately, other likable candidates are more worth investing in.
After Harris, the top choices include Gavin Newsom, who is posted at +500, Susan Rice at +750, Michelle Obama at +1000 and Gretchen Whitmer at +1400.
Eliminating Candidates: Harris
Let’s start with Harris. She is not so rock-solid as her odds suggest.
Oftentimes, one has to consider a vice president in tandem with a specific president because it’s the president who will choose his running mate. It’s extra plausible that someone else besides Harris ends up as the Democratic Party’s VP nominee because Joe Biden is not married to her as the nominee.
As approval ratings show, she is deeply unpopular. Recent polls have placed her approval rating at below 40%, making her uniquely disliked among vice presidents in history.
Undesirable
There is, indeed, a lot to dislike about her, which furthers the sense that Biden — or any other presidential nominee — would not choose her as a running mate, because it would be ridiculous to do so.
For starters, the ways she conducts herself in interviews and otherwise in public is terrible. One problem is that she often sounds unintelligent to the point of satire.
Especially with Biden, who is almost 81 and whose age is evident in his mumbling, his incoherence when speaking, his tendency to fall, and in the instances where he looks lost and confused, one has to scrutinize the vice-presidential nominee as a presidential candidate — because the Vice President would take over for the President should the latter be unfit to serve in office.
Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren is one member of a long list of Democrats who have expressed disrespect toward Harris and who would influence Biden’s choice of a running mate.
This disrespect is consistent with the general reaction to the material for satire that Harris delivers in her interviews when she sounds unintelligent. Harris, even within her party, is not respected as a leader let alone someone who could confront the likes of Vladimir Putin on the world stage.
Indeed, when she warned Putin not to invade Ukraine, he was not impressed.
All of this is relevant to the election because if members of her party do not respect her, then independents and moderate Republicans must seem less likely to respect her. She would make an undesirable running mate because she would not help the presidential nominee win the election. She would hurt the presidential nominee’s chances.
Biden chose her in the first place to help his chances as a white man by allying himself with a black woman. But her flaws would upend her capacity to help him win the election.
Eliminating Other Candidates
Newsom has been floated as a potential presidential candidate, so it seems odd to see him as an option for the vice-presidential nominee.
While he has voiced his support for Biden’s reelection bid, that doesn’t preclude him from deciding ultimately to run for president, especially in view of Biden’s increasingly apparent cognitive deterioration and the overall lack of support even within their party for Biden’s reelection bid.
Susan Rice is too low-profile of a figure.
Gretchen Whitmer’s star shone back in 2020 in the context of her COVID response and criticism of Donald Trump. But that was back in 2020.
Michelle Obama
I recommend investing in Michelle Obama to be the 2024 Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee. Biden, who seems likeliest to run again, has already vocalized his willingness and enthusiasm to have her serve as his running mate.
Indeed, we already know from his selection of Harris that he is interested in promoting diversity and appealing to certain demographics by having a black female running mate.
But Obama should have massively more appeal than Harris.
The Pick
Many are nostalgic for Barack Obama’s presidency. Obviously, his wife — the mere name “Obama” — serves that nostalgia. As reported by the likes of NBC, polls have shown Barack Obama’s persistent popularity, which transfers to Michelle Obama.
She would help Biden win his reelection campaign — she would, indeed, help any Democratic Party presidential nominee win the 2024 election — because of her association with Obama and because of her race and gender.
There is so much to like about Michelle Obama, and yet we get her at +1000 while the wildly unpopular Harris is still favored too heavily and other candidates remain overvalued by oddsmakers.
Michelle Obama with +1000 at BetOnline.
